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Rockstar Faces Employee 'Quality-of-life' Issues

Joystiq's reporting on a situation brewing at Rockstar's San Diego studio, where multiple sources are reporting mismanagement and quality-of-life issues. The situation began last week with a post on Gamasutra from wives distraught over working conditions at the San Diego studio. Joystiq pursued the story, and found several sources naming the same issues raised in the Gamasutra post, as well as dispiriting tidbits regarding the future of the Midnight Club franchise.

According to sources, "management slowly dismantled the MC team for reasons unknown to most," even firing franchise staples Jay Panek and Mark Garone after Midnight Club: LA shipped last year. The team was then led to believe that another MC title would be forthcoming, but the situation devolved as it was outsourced to another developer and then canceled altogether.

In addition to woes over the MC franchise, previous and current San Diego studio employees cited Rockstar New York as a constant source of unrealistic deadlines, last-minute changes and overall mismanagement. As one worker puts it, "anyone from the New York office is feared, because people in the San Diego office know that they are unstable and needy ... in other words, if a comment comes from a person from New York, it's a mandate that needs to be immediately addressed regardless of previous priorities."

Tyler says: I love many Rockstar games, but I hate everything that I hear coming from the companies' disgruntled employees. It's not unlike rooting for the bad guys in professional wrestling, it's just that real lives, not make-believe ones, are affected by Rockstar's malevolence. Every time I think of "gaming journalism" I think of Rockstar, and how any writer who can get a year's worth of access to the company for an all-telling feature would have a goldmine of "Almost Famous" moments to draw from. Anyone at Rockstar NYC that has a couch I could crash on for 356 days, hit me up!